Strangest Box of Pennies Yet...

[Axecutioner]

I open up a taped, sealed, and stamped Brinks box of pennies and find all CWR's, every single roll. I open the first roll and the first thing I find is a silver dime - 1948. The next 15 rolls had absolutely no copper at all. I picked one more out of the bottom, still no copper. Didn't bother with the rest.

I'm not sure if I should be happy about the results of this box or not.

 

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[ImpurestStewart]

Open the rest and look for silver.

 

[Axecutioner]

Nothing in the rest. Not a single copper penny. Weird.

 

[BuffaloBoy]

Open the rest and look for silver.

+1

look for that silver, you never know. I would rip that box to shreads looking for silver, only considering you got a silver dime from the first roll.

HH and happy holidays!!!

 

[CardsNCoins]

Word on the street is that Brinks, in some of their areas (I've heard L.A. and Utah so far) is using a super sorter to remove copper cents (or maybe delivering and picking up from a large company that is doing it). I believe they also did this in the past with Jackson Metals before the melt ban.

Here is a thread from another site discussing it.

http://www.realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9880

 

[diggummup]

The Supersorters have been out since the early 90's. Does it have the ability to determine and cull copper or silver, yes. What do they do with it? I couldn't tell you. The stories are varied and conflicting.

If you really want to know how the new and improved (as of 1990) Supersorter works have a good read-
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/4898564/description.html

This was invented in part by William L. Gunn, president of Brinks Engineering at the time and since retired.
http://www1.legis.ga.gov/legis/2007_08/versions/sr559_Read_and_adopted_LC_96_2683_2.htm

I'll copy and paste the short end of it for those who do want to get too involved-

It is known to those skilled in the art that as frequency of the excitation signal is lowered, under the above stated assumption of the uniform field in the counterbore, the change in inductance for high frequency signals is relatively insensitive to the metallic content of a passing coin. The skin effects tend to appear and the change in coupling will be primarily due to the size of the passing coin.

The inventors of the present invention have applied this knowledge in a novel fashion to produce a multi-frequency excitation signal which is mixed at the input to the transformer primary and separated at the output of the detector coil in order to detect contributions of the output signal from both the high frequency and low frequency excitations. In the preferred embodiment, the high frequency excitation is on the order of 100 kiloHertz and the low frequency excitation is on the order of 1.5 kiloHertz.

It is within the scope of the present invention, and may be required with certain mixes of non-U.S. coinage, to use frequencies other than the two used in the preferred embodiment. Additionally, it may be desirable under circumstances which will be apparent to those skilled in the art in light of the present disclosure, to use more than two frequencies. Additionally, it is within the scope of the present invention to measure both amplitude peak and width of the output signals from the detectors at the various frequencies in order to discriminate among coins of similar sizes and alloy contents, particularly in situations such as the European market in which a plurality of coinages of different nations are often found mixed in batches of coins which need processing.

The inventors of the present invention have discovered that three basic signature parameters are derived from these signals which can be dependably used to discriminate among a wide variety of coin denominations.

Like most coin discriminators employing excitation and detection coils, the magnitude characteristic of the output signal of the detection coil will have some form of characteristic shape as the coin passes, reaching a maximum magnitude when the coin is most nearly centered beneath the inductor. The magnitude characteristic rises as the coin approaches the center and falls as it leaves the center. The inventors of the present invention have discovered that the width of the pulse contributed by the high frequency signal component and its peak value can be uniquely correlated to the size of various coins commonly used in modern coinage systems throughout the world. The width of a magnitude characteristic, as described herein, refers to the temporal width of the pulse between points at which it crosses a predetermined threshold in each direction. In other words, the width of the pulse is equal to the period of time between the event of the magnitude characteristic crossing a predetermined threshold in the positive direction and the event of the magnitude characteristic subsequently falling below the threshold.

While the preferred embodiment of the present invention detects both width and peak value of the magnitude characteristic of the detected high frequency signal, for United States coinage it has been found only necessary to use the peak value from the low frequency signal as a signature component. Thus, the present invention uses a single balanced transformer detection coil which is excited with two relatively widely spaced frequency components to detect both size and metallic content of coins. The detection is accomplished by separating the high and low frequency signal components at the secondary of the transformer and detecting three signature characteristics. The three signature characteristics are the pulse width of the magnitude characteristic for the high frequency component and the peak value of same, and the peak value of the low frequency component. From these three signature characteristics, it has been determined that all coins in a typical coinage system, such as United States pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, half-dollars and dollars can be reliably identified.

As was the case in the apparatus of the Hull patents, id., jets of compressed air are used to blow a detected coin out of the counterbore and into a coin receiving conduit for collection or packaging.

 

[Generic_Lad]

It seems odd though that Brinks would bother culling copper rather than silver. It isn't exactly easy to sell large volumes of copper pennies, unlike silver coins.

 

[usandthem]

^ I do it every day. And I'm making money at it. They are probably putting the copper away until it can be sold more readily. I think the principle is called "investing" or "hoarding".

 

[legend76]

Word on the street is that Brinks, in some of their areas (I've heard L.A. and Utah so far) is using a super sorter to remove copper cents (or maybe delivering and picking up from a large company that is doing it). I believe they also did this in the past with Jackson Metals before the melt ban.

Here is a thread from another site discussing it.

http://www.realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9880

and this http://realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9826

which looks like Brink's sorts Coinstars copper sents for them. One poster said a guy in NC is buying $5 mill in Cu cents from coinstar over the next 2 yrs

 

[Bigheed]

If all your rolls were CWR and not crimp, all you got is a carefully opened box that someone resealed with brown packing tape.

As for Brinks -

I could see brinks doing this for clients at a fee, but I do not see them hoarding copper. Also since they do not own the coins just like the silver they cannot pull it out of circulation. They would have to provide this service to a client.

Brinks business is coin processing not coin hoarding.

It's like a bank, they are in the business of making loans, not owning property.

Just my 2 copper

 

[usandthem]

^ If you read the links above I believe it says that Brinks is doing this for a customer for a fee. The customer is the one that is investing and hoarding. Brinks is making their money by charging a fee.

 

[Bigheed]

I did read the articles and thats why I said in my reply

I can see them doing this for a fee since it is processing.

Other people in the responses to the linked threads though are speculating about Brinks hoarding, all I am saying in regards to that is, "No, I don't think that is in there business plan".

 

[dp2013]

To the OP. Any time I come a cross a roll of all Zinc I get out my small cheap scale to weigh the remaining rolls. This way I don't have to open, remove, look through and replace the cents if they turn out to be all zinc. The scale will let you know if the roll contains Cu.